Volume 6 Number 276
What is this disinformation business we read so much about today? Here’s an example. On the morning of June 25th, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said on Fox News that “The president has coronavirus under control. The upturn we are seeing is occurring in only 3 percent of our counties.”
Image by Weyant, Boston Globe
This, as far as it goes, probably is truthful. But it is still deceitful, enough to enter the realm of disinformation and probably go to near the head of the class. This is no casual matter. After all, it deals with a problem that all Americans are concerned about, potentially affecting their behavior, their livelihoods, and even their lives.
Digging a bit further, we see that Mr. Azar’s 3 percent (of our more than 3,000 counties) nets out to about 90 spiking counties. It is reasonable to then ask, “Which 90”? Here’s the rub. Chances are it’s probably in the most populous counties; that is where the coronavirus is most prevalent. This means it is more likely Los Angeles County, with a population of over 10 million, rather than Kalawao, Hawaii, with a population of 88. Sure enough, here is a clue from the headlines of June 23, just two days before Mr. Azar spoke: ”Los Angeles County Coronavirus Update: Hospitalizations Rise, Positivity Rate Jumps Amid Ongoing Spike In Cases.”
If all the county spikes came out of those 90 most populous ones, that would put a neat 40 percent of the population at this more serious risk. That’s right. Approximately two-fifths of our population crowd together in the 90 most populous counties. So, let’s say only two-thirds of those counties on the upswing come from the most populous ones. This is still conservatively attributing the upswing or spike to where one-quarter or 25 percent of the population lives. So, Mr. Azar should have been saying that this spike is much more serious than his 3 percent “disinformation” number leads one to think. Or, he probably should have kept his mouth shut.
But disinformation is the regular method of regular communication in today’s presidential administration, crowned by the king, President Disinformation himself, Donald Trump. He’s currently over 19,000 acts of disinformation, according to The Washington Post, who keeps count of such things, and climbing. Regardless of when he leaves office, he won’t be like Babe Ruth, who had his record of 60 home runs broken half a century later. Mr. Trump’s record, even if he fails to win a second term, is a good bet to last for all eternity.
Not every lie is disinformation. Disinformation was originally defined in the Great Soviet, Encyclopedia (1952), where else, as “false information with the intention to deceive public opinion.” It goes far beyond the” little white lie” when someone tells his missus that “your new hairdo looks beautiful,” when he doesn’t exactly feel that way. It involves a concerted effort to spread malicious content to deliberately deceive and affect the public consciousness. So, it is fair to say, Mr. Azar’s “3 percent” falls squarely into the disinformation category, as do all president Trump’s 19,000.
Actually, the count is 19,000 occasions. If one were to consider separate messages, there would probably be much less, probably a few hundred. Because one attribute of disinformation is the need for repetition, to say the same thing repeatedly until it is drummed into people’s heads. One good example was the untruthful “birther” attacks on Barack Obama being born out of the country. This disinformation, Trump’s launching pad in his quest for the presidency, was repeated time after time. Years later, after Trump was forced to recant this falsehood about the then president not being a native-born American, half the Republicans still believed it was true. That’s the power of disinformation.
Not only does he blow all this malarkey around, president Trump then goes around berating the media, except for Fox News, for perpetuating what he calls, “fake news.” This is an old trick of authoritarian regimes, to destroy the critical media. While he can’t gag them in a democracy, by constantly attacking them he has diminished them to his followers. So they are unlikely to attach credibility to critical reporting. It gets down to the perpetrator of “fake news” calling all his critics, “fake news.” And he gets his adherents to believe it. Neat trick.
Disinformation has been around for a long time, but it wasn’t given that name until the 20th century. In ancient Roman times, when Octavian and Antony were vying for the emperorship, Octavian spread a propaganda campaign against Antony. This took the form of short, sharp slogans written upon coins, portraying Antony as a womanizer and drunk.
When a great calamity arose during the 14th century, the Black Death, disinformation was rampant, attributing the cause to, among other things, divine wrath for the sins of the entire people, poison permeating the air, the positioning of the planets, wearing tight clothing, and with the gravest implications, blaming the Jews for poisoning wells. The disinformation was probably spread by itinerant peddlers and church communications (the only group who wrote at that time). The printing press was yet to be invented.
Newspapers gave us the first widespread dissemination of a hoax on a large scale, the Great Moon Hoax of 1835. The New York Sun published a series of articles about an imagined Life on the Moon, claiming it was fact. A series of six articles appeared with pictures of humanoid bat-like creatures, and bearded blue unicorns. This hoax was perpetrated to boost circulation and it did, dramatically. Purportedly, the enhanced readership continued after the cessation of the series.
With the coming of the 20th century, and the advent of radio, satirical news evolved, such as Orson Welles’ radio hoax “Mars invasion of earth” during the 1930s. Of course, the widespread use of disinformation in the modern era was initiated by Germany’s Adolf Hitler who picked up the mantle from another dictator, Benito Mussolini of Italy. They used the then-modern vehicles of radio and film, coupled with massive crowds to manipulate the population with their propaganda. (According to Trump’s first wife, Ivana, he was an avid reader of Hitler’s writings.)
The arrival of the internet in the later 20th century, followed by social media in the 21st century, ushered in an era of massive disinformation, propaganda, and hoaxes. Errors and fraudulent content go viral through personal distribution, reaching millions in no time. We now have technology that can mimic legitimate news websites and create doctored misrepresentations.
The weaponization of information by the Trump administration has been emulated by other authoritarian regimes. Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel uses some of the same messages almost word-for-word, emulating president Trump. Like the U.S. president, he has been snarled in attempts to unseat him for illegitimate acts while in office. He has adapted the Trump mantra of “fake news” and claimed illegitimate allegations by the media to ward off his prosecution, which, unlike Trump’s, continues.
The major user of disinformation on a worldwide scale is Russia. Its interference in the 2016 United States presidential election was massive and well-documented. All sorts of social media and phony personal appearance devices were introduced into the electoral contest in favor of Donald Trump. Then President Putin put the icing on the cake by insisting that the interference was done by Ukraine. By then president, Trump seconded this false allegation.
Disinformation has become a modern worldwide reality. The New York Times said on September 26, 2019 that, “at least 70 countries had disinformation campaigns.” These were mostly of a domestic nature but at least seven countries were seen to try to influence views outside their country with disinformation: China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. The primary social media vehicle for these attempts was Facebook, which is reluctant to censor their output.
The United States is the country most vulnerable to disinformation because “freedom of speech” is embedded in the First Amendment. Further, our culture of being free to do and say what one wants is deep-seated. Facebook, being the primary distributor of disinformation, uses the First Amendment and the accompanying argument that consumers have the right to decide whom and what to believe, as its defense against prohibiting or taking down obvious disinformation. Right now, Facebook can’t be held accountable for its contents due to a Congressional ruling in the 1990s, when the internet was in its infancy. There is increasing pressure for the social media to better police themselves.
The Democrats and their followers, who are usually the targets of president Trump’s disinformation, would be expected to take legislative action if in power after the 2020 election. This is not an unusual situation in our country. Our ability to come up with technological innovations starting with the steam engine, followed by the automobile, the telegraph, the telephone, airplanes, radio, television and finally the computer has led to great strides in our civilization. Sooner or later each innovation was tempered by regulations to meet abuses by the innovators. So don’t be surprised if, despite their prostrations, the social media will be ultimately reined in.
Mr. Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, is slowly being forced to come to terms with the threat disinformation poses to his empire. A competitor, Twitter, placed a warning label one of Mr. Trump’s many Tweets, the one that said, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Twitter placed a public interest notice on the Tweet for breaking the platform’s rules about the “glorification of violence.” Facebook didn’t take the same step but faced a vast amount of negative publicity and even thousands of requests from its own employees to follow suit.
Zuckerberg is less interested in the social aspects of disinformation then the paid advertising of the same nature. All the while Facebook is attempting, not too successfully, to keep pornographic, business scams and hate postings off its website. Political advertising is something else. It is projected that $1.34 billion will be spent on social political advertising in election year 2020, with the lion’s share going to Facebook. Hard numbers are hard to come by, but estimates of how much of this is “fake news” generally figure it is about half. Costs are based on the number of “clicks” on a website and are hard to determine. If this estimate is true than the take from “fake news” is a cool $700 million.
No wonder Zuckerberg is fighting every step of the way to preserve this windfall. It starts with seeking to prevent any regulation of what is being said politically, with the fear that this could ultimately leading to banning all political advertising. Now the heat is really on, since on July 1, 2020, some 300 of its advertisers joined a boycott against Facebook and what it allows on its platform. These are “the big money guys”: companies like Coca-Cola, Unilever, Pfizer, Levi’s, Best Buy, and Ford, to name a few. Being aware of the adage that “money talks”, don’t be surprised if Facebook starts to more aggressively undertake some forms of progressive action.
It is meaningful to remember that popular opinion is a fragile vehicle and the way we consume and interpret an increasing and dizzying amount of information seems overwhelming. We must seek new ways to counter disinformation. But no one can dictate how information is absorbed by individuals. This is a long-term fight requiring education and cultural shifts related to how people seek, consume, and validate information. Academic institutions need to make students aware of this threat and how to recognize it. This will be an arduous task.
“Information is power. Disinformation is abuse of power.”
—Newton Lee, Computer scientist
